F5, Riverbed close strong quarters

Senior executives at F5 Networks and Riverbed Technology were feeling positive about their respective quarterly financial results and suggested a return to healthier spending on application delivery and WAN optimization technologies is on its way.

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F5 reported revenue of $175.1 million for its fourth quarter, a gain of 2% from $171.3 million reported in last year’s fourth quarter. Net income for the three months ended Sept. 30 hit $28.4 million, or 36 cents per share, compared to $19.7 million, or 24 cents per share a year ago.

(For fiscal year 2009, F5’s revenue was $653.1 million, up a hair from $650.2 million in fiscal '08. Net income for the full year was $91.5 million versus $74.3 million in 2008.)

"Bookings were up across all geographic regions, especially in North America, as customers began purchasing equipment for new projects and moving forward with projects they had put on hold during the first half of the year,” said F5 CEO John McAdam in a statement.

"In general, Q4 was a strong finish to a challenging year,” McAdam said. “While it is still too early to rule out the possibility of another broad economic setback, the strength of our current business and our growing pipeline are encouraging signs that the positive trends we saw in the last two quarters will continue through fiscal 2010."

For its part, Riverbed executed a return to profitability. The company reported revenue of $102 million for its third quarter ended Sept. 30, an increase of 18% from $86.5 million reported in last year’s third quarter. Net income came in at $5.5 million, or 8 cents per share, as compared to a net loss of $12.4 million, or 17 cents per share, a year ago.

"We are pleased with our third quarter financial results," said Riverbed CEO Jerry Kennelly in a statement. "We were able to generate record revenue and strong sequential and year-over-year growth against the backdrop of a still challenging global economy. As a critical enabler of fundamental business initiatives including virtualization, cloud computing and reducing data infrastructure costs, WAN optimization continues to be a top IT priority."

During the quarter Riverbed added eight Fortune 500 customers. It also introduced Central Management Console - Virtual Edition (CMC-VE), a management platform that’s designed for managed service providers and runs on VMWare ESX.

Ann Bednarz is associate news editor at Network World.